A lethal batch of heroin contaminated by anthrax has emerged in London and Germany, and has now claimed 10 lives, two months after cases emerged in Glasgow.

The Health Protection agency said that an unnamed heroin user is being treated in a London hospital after becoming ill last month, in the first known case of anthrax being caught through drug use in England.

Investigators also confirmed that the anthrax which killed a drug user in Germany in December was indistinguishable from the strain confirmed to be in 14 of the 19 cases so far in Scotland, where nine addicts have died.